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Audi's LMP1 program has been a key to the success of the World Endurance Challenge. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

FIA wants Porsche, Audi and Toyota to join Formula One

September 6, 2012

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FIA president Jean Todt will try to persuade Audi, Porsche and Toyota—the three manufacturers whose LMP1 sports-car prototype programs are essential for the FIA World Endurance Championship—to enter Formula One. He revealed his intentions in Monza ahead of this weekend's F1 Italian Grand Prix, and added that he would also pursue an objective to cut costs by a third in F1 before 2016.

Todt managed Peugeot's Le Mans sports-car team before his successful tenure in charge of Ferrari's F1 program. He held the Ferrari post immediately before his election in 2009 as motorsport's principal global administrator.

“Costs are my main objective, because they must be reduced by a further 30 percent in the next three years, otherwise we will lose several teams,” Todt told Gazzetta dello Sport. “Formula One must be a business for everyone, with balances in the black for the teams. Nowadays this may be the case for only two or three teams.

“However we are now close to a satisfactory conclusion with the new Concorde Agreement, after tense discussions over common objectives.

“From 2014, with the new regulations and the turbo engine, we will take a step towards the world we predict we will be living in.

“And maybe I will be able to convince several engine manufacturers that are now in endurance racing or elsewhere into building engines for Formula One, too: Audi, Toyota, Porsche, the Koreans . . . ”

History tells us that manufacturers which produce Grand Prix engines do not normally also compete elsewhere. This situation—the FIA apparently trying to herd manufacturers from sports-car racing toward F1—is a familiar tale for World Endurance Championship veterans.

At the beginning of the 1990s, acting on the wishes of F1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone, FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre and Manufacturers Commission chairman Max Mosley suddenly made F1 engines mandatory in sports-car racing. At that time, Lotus and Ferrari were the only manufacturers engaged in F1, while the former Group C “fuel formula” sports-car series was contested by Aston Martin, Jaguar, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Peugeot, Porsche and Toyota.

Within a few years, Jaguar, Mercedes, Peugeot and Toyota all departed sports-car racing in favor of F1, and the sport was left in total disarray. Aston Martin, Mazda and Nissan quit front-line motorsports altogether.

Todt's remarks in Italy will inevitably cause concern in some quarters of the World Endurance Championship that similar damage could be the eventual outcome should Todt stick to his pledge.